The Israeli military issued an order to uproot olive trees in a 0.27sq-km (0.1sq-mile) area in al-Mughayyir, a village of about 4,000 residents northeast of Ramallah.<\/p>\n
The army justified the measure by saying the trees posed a \u201csecurity threat\u201d to a main Israeli settlement road that runs through the village\u2019s lands.<\/p>\n
The destruction was carried out as al-Mughayyir has been under lockdown since Thursday after an Israeli settler said he was shot at in the area.<\/p>\n
The deputy head of the village council, Marzouq Abu Naim, told Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli soldiers had stormed more than 30 homes since dawn on Saturday, destroying residents\u2019 property and vehicles.<\/p>\n
For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees \u2013 an important Palestinian cultural symbol<\/a> \u2013 across the occupied Palestinian territory as part of the country\u2019s efforts to seize Palestinian land and forcibly displace residents.<\/p>\n The West Bank also has seen a surge in Israeli military and settler violence since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes.<\/p>\n More than 2,370 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians have been reported across the area from January 2024 to the end of July this year, according to the latest figures<\/a> from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).<\/p>\n The highest number of attacks \u2013 585 \u2013 was recorded in the Ramallah area, followed by 479 in the Nablus region in the northern West Bank.<\/p>\n At least 671 Palestinians, including 129 children, also have been killed by Israeli forces and Israeli settlers across the West Bank in that same time period, OCHA said.<\/p>\n The Israeli military did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera\u2019s request for comment on Saturday on the uprooting of the olive trees in al-Mughayyir.<\/p>\n Hamza Zubeidat, a Palestinian researcher, said the destruction is part of Israel\u2019s \u201ccontinuous\u201d effort to force Palestinians off their lands<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be clear that since 1967, Israel is still implementing the same plan of evicting the Palestinian population from the countryside and the cities of the West Bank. What\u2019s going on right now is just a continuous process of this eviction of Palestinians. It\u2019s not a new Israeli process,\u201d Zubeidat told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n![\"Palestinian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/2025-05-28T122111Z_1049510531_RC2XQEAB5ANK_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-WEST-BANK-SETTLERS-ATTACK-1.jpeg\")
Palestinian men collect wheat after an attack by Israeli settlers in al-Mughayyir in May [File: Mohammed Torokman\/Reuters]<\/p>\n